On Lieberman, or: The Inadequacy of Emotion

There are reasons why Joesph Lieberman should not have kept his chair of homeland security, just as there are reasons why Lawrence Summers should not be Secretary of the Treasury. Unlike what you might have heard from 90% of the media, those reasons are not entirely due to the fact that both have said some really stupid shit. The better reason is that Summers and Lieberman have not been good at their jobs. In fact, they've been terrible. Summers helped write NAFTA, supported the WTO, and aided fellow smartest guy in the room by not regulating the energy industry (seriously, click on the 'not regulating' link - it's the downing memo of the economy). He also helped McCain advisor Phil Gramm deregulate the banking industry - the same Phil Gramm who recently called America a nation of whiners.

Similarly, Lieberman has been an advocate for Bush's foreign "policy" including supporting the war, the spying, the torture and not using his position to investigate rampant corruption on the part of contractors. There are some people who take on corruption in their own party, and then there are people who manage to facilitate corruption in both parties. I know that the 'epic betrayal' angle plays well, but the point is that he has been as bad at his job as George Bush. The media (Maddow excepted) does not mention this, which is upsetting because when someone does bring it up, Lieberman supporters are almost a loss for words.

So this is change we can believe in. The only thing to do is to keep pushing Lieberman and everyone else to do what he/they haven't done in the past two years: investigate the contractors, the spying, the torture, and then stop the war. And then I'm still contributing to whichever liberal candidate challenges him in 2012.

Incidentally, while I promote a politics of policy over one of emotion, I certainly understand/identify with the visceral hate that so many feel for people like Lieberman (and I don't think 'visceral hate' is too strong). In fact, I think Bob Dylan summed it up best:

Against Gay Marriage

Right now, the headless monster known as the gay rights "movement" is protesting all across California against a proposition which has already passed. I find the sight of people campaigning two weeks after an election sort of comical, but I won't burn through the goodwill of the handful of readers I do have so quickly: I support equality. The main reason I'm not reacting to to prop 8's passing with shock and hysteria is because I see this as a lost battle in larger war. First of all, there is a strong-sounding argument to be made to the California supreme court, so it probably won't even be enacted. Second, if it is, we'll have this same battle again in 2010, and in the long term demographics suggest that the 80s/90s culture war is losing its fizzle and primacy in American politics. Lastly, as far as I understand it, most of the rights and benefits of marriage are federally derived, and so the practical effect of state recognition or state bans is minimal (which suggests that there should by a national movement to press the sympathetic president elect into making good on his promise to recognize gay marriage federally).

But the bigger problem I have with all of this is that I don't actually support gay marriage, in the sense that I don't support any kinds of marriage the way the institution is presently constructed. What strikes me about the laundry list of rights and benefits of contemporary marriage is not how many rights gay people don't have but how many rights married people do have. These are admittedly laws I don't fully understand, but it seems that many of them should not, as a matter of principle, be limited only to people who are married (such as extended hospital visiting hours for spouses). That is, to talk about equal rights for gay people is a little bit of a red herring in the context of marriage, as it takes for granted another inequality: the one between married and single people.

Furthermore, on a broader, historical level, the evangelicals are right: marriage is traditionally defined between a man and a woman, the latter typically not being asked about the matter, and the whole institution existing mainly for the patriarchal transfer and maintenance of wealth and power. This 'substructure' emphasis may be a bit overdramatic, but pretending that marriage is all about the recent invention of "true love" is simply ignorant. The modern gay rights movement has focused on gaining access to two of the most conservative and constitutively homophobic institutions in society: marriage and the military. They do this not even in an attempt to subvert them, as the religious right suggests, but on their own terms, for the sake of monogamy/'true love' in the former and for serving one's country in the latter. Why?

Some proponents of gay marriage like Dan Savage understand the institutional aspect of marriage but claim that it doesn't matter anymore:

The problem for opponents of gay marriage isn't that gay people are trying to redefine marriage but that straight people have redefined marriage to a point that it no longer makes any sense to exclude gay couples. Gay people can love, gay people can commit. Some of us even have children. So why can't we get married?... Ultimately gay people only want what straight people already have: the right for each couple to define marriage for themselves.

Through the lens of Savage's cosmopolitan sex life, even straight marriage doesn't mean anything anymore (I use cosmopolitan as a critical term, not in the sarah-paliny-sense). But marriage is not just an eclectic collection of idiosyncratic arrangements, all individually defined. It's an institution engraved in the legal code, it structures social relations, and many critics would argue it is a fundamental support to capitalism. (And consumerism - as evinced by the $30 billion per year wedding industry which includes everything from dresses and gift registries, to wedding planning, to Savage's getting "married in a tank full of dolphins," to mass weddings and reality tv shows, to, of course, blood diamonds).

So, in my view, the debate over gay marriage is not really between "true love" vs. the "moral sanctity of marriage." Rather, it is between unhinged consumer capitalism vs. bigotry. Similarly, the debate over gays in the military is about patriotic violence vs. bigotry. Do I have to choose sides here? And if, despite my vote and financial contribution to the campaign, I don't have the enthusiasm to stand with the FUCK PROP 8 types nor even read their emails, does that make me a bigot?

The eventual success of gay marriage will be either a Pyrrhic victory - if in the process the potential for a queer movement is lost - or a somewhat meaningless one, as it will achieve equality only by accepting all sorts of other inequalities.

--

This post got too long, which prevents me from getting apoplexy while discussing modernity's most attractive fiction: "true love." For those of you who have a Harper's subscription, I would recommend this book review by Laura Kipnis. A couple good quotes:

The premise that love is a good enough reason for embarking on marriage took grip only in the late eighteenth century, and then only in Western Europe and North America, concomitant with other changes during the era, from the spread of a market economy and rise of individualism to the invention of the novel...

Today, submitting to such regulations seems entirely natural, but let's not forget that licensing our life decisions remains a tool of modern population management. So the next time you file for divorce, amidst the angst and sense of personal failure, take a moment to consider why the state wants to dictate the conditions under which love's dissolution may occur.

UPDATE: This is more like it: when I say bread and butter I mean bread and fucking butter.

UPDATE2: Gay marriage supporters quote Walter Benjamin, reach new levels of stupidity

"Bob Rubin and Larry Summers have got to go"

electing the first black president was only step 1...

UPDATE: sign the petition

The Day After

election day

There is something desperately lonely about Barack Obama's universe. One gets the overwhelming sense of someone yearning for connection, for something that binds human beings together, for community and commonality, for what he repeatedly calls "the common good." Belief in the common good is the sole basis for hope. Without belief, there is nothing to be done. Such is the avowedly improbable basis for Obama's entire push for the presidency...

At the core of The Audacity of Hope is someone who lives at a distance, someone distanced from himself and from others and craving a bond, a commitment to bind him together with other Americans and to bind Americans together. There is a true horror vacui in Obama, a terror of loneliness and nothingness...

Obama wants to believe in the common good as a way of providing a fullness to experience that avoids the slide into nihilism. But sometimes I don't know if he knows what belief is and what it would be to hold such a belief. The persistent presence of the Mother's dilemma - the sense of loneliness, doubt, and abandonment - seems palpable and ineliminable. We must believe, but we can't believe. Perhaps this is the tragedy that some of us see in Obama: a change we can believe in and the crushing realization that nothing will change.

- Simon Critchley

I can't stop posting videos of crazy shit

via Wonkette

ps. I thought if you didn't get a treat you were supposed to do a trick. Kids need to enforce their candy rights more.

UPDATE: Shirley Nagel
465 Belanger St, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI
(313) 884-2598

Happy Halloween

I like Halloween.

The EndTimes: Halloween Edition

Endtimes are near. How else would you explain this picture? As in, WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO FUCKING HOT IN LATE OCTOBER?!?!?! (On a related note, I drove to LA yesterday and it "only" took me 50 min. Who designed this city?). Clearly, the only way to explain why I'm watching the World Series and dying of heat at the same time is that anti-christ is coming soon. Which is a good thing, because from what I hear hell does not have 39B staff meetings.

Seriously though. Actually, I take theocons less seriously than neocons, partially because the former are so easily tricked by the latter. While I would defend religion as such from supposed rationalists like Sam Harris, many of these people, in addition to being gullible, also have a problem with crazyness. And when they blog, special things happen.

I spent much of my fourteenth year of life in a t-shirt that featured a picture of flying saucer and the word "BELIEVE," so I know not only a thing or two about conspiracy theories but also faith. One hardworking blogger has already rounded up many of the Obama theories that conservatives, religious or not, have concocted. And yes, the mainstream media should drop their liberal bias and report on all of them immediately.

If you are not from the mainstream media, but instead from, say, fox news, you can only lament as to what could have been, as James Pinkerton does in a recent post. For Pinkerton, the McCain campaign should have made the objectively verifiable point that Obama was pallin' around not just with Ayers and Wright, but also with another nefarious figure: lucifer. Turns out, Obama is inspired, and possibly funded - we'll never know - by the devil. Alas, if only people knew this, then surely they would not vote for him. According to Pinkerton, McCain should have dug through Obama's personal life and based his campaign on character attacks, because "that’s how you win a presidential campaign, even amidst hard times for your party." Instead, you know, RIP Lee Atwater.

Second up is some heavy investigative journalism from a woman named Flo Ellers. No, she is not on the US women's water polo team. Apparently - and this is something I did NOT know - she visited "tribal Christians" in Kenya and found that " witches, warlocks and those involved in satanism and the occult get up daily at 3 a.m. to release curses against McCain and Palin so B. Hussein Obama is elected." WITCHES!!! WARLOCKS!!! BOO!!! So what worm are these early birds trying to get? Obviously, they are "weaving lazy 8's around McCain's mind to make him look confused and like an idiot." This explains the aimless wandering at the town hall debate. Poor J. McCain. But there is a bigger point here: your friend Ameeth has once again found you a halloween costume. You could be a warlock for Obama. Just put on black face, carry a big stick, and otherwise try to look 'tribal.' But then have an Obama shirt on. It will be ironic, just like that New Yorker cover a few months ago. Wait - actually, don't do that. Just go as regular warlock.





Non-theocons are also getting in on the act. My favorite is this post, wonderfully titled "Obama Sets Up New Gestapo Agency For His Regime." It suggests that Obama will enact Dennis Kucinich's long standing dream of a police state, something of a cross between the Stasi and the SS. Clearly conservatives are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties under an Obama administration (though they do not see the irony of writing about this concern in a blog titled, for example, Stop the ACLU).

So, ladies and gentleman, cue "Love Roller Coaster" for the next Heinrich Himmler:



One wonders if this new police state will have the power to listen in on people's phone calls, read their mail, look into what books they're reading, and infiltrate their political discussion groups. Obama will probably issue a record number of secret presidential orders, and then alter the rules so that classified documents take a generation to become public. Maybe an Obama administration would give its 'unitary executive' sweeping powers to suspend habeas corpus and detain people indefinitely, set up secret prisons in former communist countries, and torture people based on techniques learned from former communist and Nazi interrogators, the whole process concluding, if ever, with show trials. To justify this he would also have to declare a never-ending war, label anyone opposed to this war as a traitor even if that meant outing a CIA agent, depend on a complicit media, and above all politicize the justice department so that what's prosecuted is not the administration's real crimes, but their opponents' fabricated corruption. This would allow him to give millions of dollars of no-bid contracts to his friends - how socialist! The American people would not put up with this, but it wouldn't matter because the Obama camp would simply steal the election with the help of the Supreme Court and/or paperless touch-screen voting machines.

Now THAT, my friends, would be the way to destroy the "fabric of democracy" and replace it with an Orwellian nightmare. But of course, such a crazy scenario would never happen. If the government and it's corporate sponsors gave itself that much power, surely these religious, gun-toting conspiracy theorists would rise up in revolt.

Right?

UPDATE

I will post the video of bill o'reilly yelling at Barney.

no holds barred god smackdown coming soon

My money's on Xenu

The Three Rs: Reading any and all (elite) media, Regulating oil and gas, and...ouR kitchen table

There is a video out there on the interwebs of Willaim O'Reils yelling at Barney Frank, lispy representative of the Washington elite, for causing Freddie and Fannie to fail. I won't post it here because he's too tiresome to watch, but essentially his message to democrat no-nothing-know-it-alls is this: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, "PLAY US OUT"?!??! FUCKING THING SUCKS!!!

I think O'Reilly was trying to play to his disaffected, conservative (reactionary?) viewers by 'stickin' it to the man' in charge, in this case Barney Frank (GET IT? I'm clever too). Because clearly Barney Frank is in charge of everything and always has been and is the sole reason for people hating politicians.

Speaking of Bill O'Reilly's disaffected, conservative viewers, did you know that around 30 million Americans are functionally illiterate? And according to the Daily Kos' "Hannah," who may or may not be one of Thomas Pynchon's writing students, the people who represent them may be too! It's a good read, one which involves fake war stories, family tragedy, disavowal of friendship, Spanish psychologists, astronauts, cause and effect, and democracy.

Speaking of people who may be functionally illiterate...teaching. As in, my students are not functionally illiterate! Yay! They are much smarter and more engaged than I expected. Teaching is not that hard. The only thing hard about teaching is the special needs website that we have to use to teach our students about "digital literacy." Except that, every time we ask the course administrators why our website lost in the internet special Olympics, they get all Sarah Palin on us and explain that we shouldn't worry about it because the students are already more digitally literate than us and will figure it out the only thing they can't do is think critically and write except you can't fix that by just having them write on sheets of paper you need to use the online tools and oh they don't work hmm well we'll just have to get back to ya on that.

But our course administrators are smart and educated and Sarah Palin seems so, I don't know, not. Therefore, it must be that neither W nor McPalin are functionally illiterate. Rather what we are seeing is a whole new emerging discourse, indeed, an entirely new epistemological frame. This week has marked the turning point in the rise of this frame, culminating in last night's debate (Adennak via Wonkette via Andrew Sullivan):

Back in the OC

I've spent the last couple of weeks moving into my new apartment. I'm very happy to be living with fellow comp lit grad student vicki, and in the part of graduate student housing where the rent is $200 less than the other part. And I actually have a view of still undeveloped hills.

Anyway, being back in the oc is more or less as awful as I thought it would be. It's like last year but replace nervousness with disillusionment. Also I have to start teaching this year. I had my first class yesterday and it went ok. I think it will more of a chore than anything else. I also find it ridiculous to be teaching anything to anyone.

That's all. This is the first nominee for song of the quarter:

your life of leisure

My worst fears have been confirmed: you are reading this blog. Or at least you were, until it became too difficult to continue blogging. It was just too much, what with the uploading of pictures and the writing about what I've been doing, and just, you know, the whole thing. But this blog will not die, partially because I will be going back to school and this will be the funnest part of my life.

So my final month in Berlin was awesome times 100. This is what I did, since apparently you care:

- learned that phil was staying in Berlin for August; hung out with phil

- hit up the berlin club scene. This was good because Americans don't like or understand techno even though they try when they are Berlin (sorry American friends). It was really fun, though weird to stay up all night while "sober." Also, real Berliners apparently only go to clubs like Panorama at 6 in the morning, and the famous djs don't come on till at least 8, and if you leave at 7:30 people make fun of you. Some clubs have ice cream and swings, some clubs have ping pong. There are no actual children though, because they all got drunk at the beer garden.

- before, I speak in german past tense. Then, I have in past tense german learned.

- I met Anne, my wonderful language partner from east berlin. We spoke about our weekend activities in german, and about the role of the stasi in everyday east german life in english. She also took me to Marzhan and Lichtenberg but we failed to get beat up by neo-nazis. So that's an experience that will have to wait. But it was cool cause they pained the housing boxes.

- went to artists' squats and galleries, saw more art, saw more ping pong

- hung out with fun people

- went to london, saw clare after a million years, did not walk on grass

And that's that. Now I am in Denver. During my summer long housing saga, I briefly entertained the idea of moving to los angeles. But now I will be moving to palo verde, California, and there will be Starbucks and Del Tacos everywhere, and I will be teaching this year, and Christians will yell at me on my way to class, and my teachers will either tell me to figure my shit out or pretend that I already have, and oh my god. The only bright point of the quarter will be when Sarah Palin starts speaking in tongues during the vice-presidential debate, but if John McCain wins the presidency by 126 imaginary votes in ohio, I swear I will kill myself by choking on my organic-arugula-free-range-brie sandwich while driving my prius off a cliff in san francisco. Otherwise, I'm glad to be back in the USA.

One of the best things about being here is the plethora of art, especially modern and contemporary art, in both museums and galleries. This is part of Berlin's contemporary reputation, and it does seem that the fall of the wall led to a very exciting and creative atmosphere, though I wonder if this period is coming to an end or becoming more formalized now. In any case, Berlin feels like a city a little less enamored or stuck in its long gone past, like some other places I've been in Europe. There is 'history' everywhere, of course, but of such an ambivalent and complex nature that it (perhaps) provides an impetus to be forward looking rather than the opposite.

When I lived and New York and had practically no friends, one of my favorite activities on Saturday morning was to go to the Chelsea galleries or to the Whitney or some other museum. New York had its fair share of mediocre or (especially) gimmicky art, but I also went to some fantastic shows while I was there.

This was something I really missed while in San Francisco. Anyone who's spoken to me for 30 minutes knows that I love San Francisco, but for a city with so many people who are interested in art, with the finances and cultural motivation to support the arts, SF disappoints too often. Many galleries in SOMA/downtown had boring/derivative work and sometimes even charged (?!), the open studios were a nice way to waste an afternoon, and art openings were miserable multi-media events. (The SF MOMA did have some good shows, though). Like someone here said, the SF arts scene excels at producing things that that are more towards the 'craft' end of the spectrum.

Anyway, that's all just to say that it's nice and every exciting to once again be in a place where I can see both established and new or quasi-new modern and contemporary art (actually, I think I can do this in LA, but not without spending the whole day in a car). Below are some of the works that I have scene in the past month.

Andreas Gursky - Singapore Stock Excahnge

Andreas Gursky - library

Wolfgang Tillmans - freischwimmer

Wolfgang Tillmans - [video of peas boiling with a soundtrack (speech or at a concert)]

Joseph Beuys - meterology

Andy Warhol - Mao

Andy Warhol - Big Electric Chair

Anselm Kiefer - volkszahlung

Anselm Kiefer

Jim Lambie

Frenhofer Y La Laguna (same as above pre-text)

Antonia Low

Barack Obama owes me a swiss army knife

You may not have heard, but Barack Obama was in town last week. I won’t recap his speech or the visit at length, since so many others have done so. Basically his speech was about how arrogant he is to prefer political to military victory, unless it’s a Prussian military victory, in which case he’s a secret Muslim named Osama Hussein Hitler. The crowd was ‘mixed,’ which apparently is an evocative adjective if you’re an American journalist. Aside from starting chants with America’s expat youth, one of whom does not yet know how to say ‘yellow,’ the highlight of the evening was the girl in American flag pants who might have been in this video (is that racist or post-racial?). U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!!

my sad bike

One of Brett’s primary recommendations for me in Berlin was to get a bike. Bicycle’s are ubiquitous here. Berlin is an extremely flat city, and, though large, is very bike-able. I don’t know if there are any formal share-the-road rules, but on smaller streets especially cars seem to expect and accept the presence of bikers. The sidewalks of the larger streets have bike lanes, and sidewalks in general are large and fine to bike on if you can manage to avoid hitting any kinder.

The first week I was here it was very sunny and I was very jealous seeing everyone on their bike while I walked, even though I like to walk. The GI is a 30 min walk or a very easy 10 min bike ride from my place. So that weekend after brunch the Bode crew and I went to the Mauer Park Flohmarkt (flea market), which is the best of three flea markets that I’ve been to here. As soon as I walked in I saw a good looking road bike, but it was for 80 euro and being the deliberate shopper that I am, decided to look around.

It is clear at this point in my life that I am not very good at buying things. By that I mean, I’m not very good at spontaneously buying things. If I see something I like in a store my first impulse is to note where the store is and come back another day. If I need to make a decision right away, my usual routine is to stare at the object in question for 20-30 minutes while considering all the possible ramifications of my potential purchasing decision. Do I really like this t-shirt? Am I sure that this t-shirt fits me the right way? Is $8 too much to spend on a t-shirt? What else could I buy with $8? etc. On the other hand, I’m a very good shopper if I have 10-20 hours to kill and an internet connection. This is the method I use for anything over $25. (The only time this didn’t work is when I was interested a couple years ago in buying a mattress. Judging from the comments on the many mattress forums, I am convinced that shopping for a mattress makes people go crazy.)

Back to Mauer park, while there were many bicycles at this flohmarkt many of them were not in very good condition, or were single speeds, or girl’s bikes, or some combination thereof. I ended up paying 70 euro for a blue road bike that was functional and kind of nice looking but had clearly seen better days.

I wouldn’t mind riding around a crappy bike so long as it worked ok, but the brakes on this particular vehicle started failing within days of taking it home. Even then, it wasn’t a big issue and was slightly comical, and having a bike was more a convenience than a liability. However, eventually the brake got stuck in one position, a position too close to the wheel so that the brake and wheel were rubbing against each other. It still sort of works, but as the guy at Fahrrad Linke said, if the wheel wears through it will just blow out while I’m riding, which would not be very good. The woman at Fahrrad Linke just laughed at me.

To add further insult, I locked my bike up on the street the other day, and when I got back to the spot, someone had broken my lock! Of all the bikes not just in that one spot, but all over the city, many of which have much crappier and easier-to-break locks than mine, someone decided to cut mine. Why is that an insult? Because fortunately (?), while they broke the lock, they decided to not take the bike! Perhaps they cut the lock out of general spite, or maybe they just wanted to borrow the bicycle for a while, but I’m thinking they rode 10 feet and realized that this bicycle is a piece of crap.

Hopefully I’ll be able to sell it.

'so I sell myself, for the highest price'

Yesterday evening Arthur, Brien and I went to see Woyzeck, a Werner Herzog film based on the Georg Büchner play. It was playing at the Lightblick Kino on Kastanienallee, which is doing a Klaus Kinski retrospective this month (in addition to a Jim Jarmusch retrospective). It’s difficult to really evaluate the film because it was in German and I, you know, don’t really understand German. Arthur had filled me in on the story before the movie, so I could follow along with the plot generally, but none of the specifics.

The film has some beautiful shots, many of which seem to linger a little bit too long. Maybe this was the most interesting for me given my lack of comprehension, because these scenes or parts of scenes exist almost outside the plot, or at least are not strictly necessary for the action of the film. I suppose many directors do this; the one I can think of now is Antonioni.

After the movie we went over to w-imbiss where I got a pretty good burrito.

and...they're playing 'Blue Monday'

cause the extended mix is, like, so much better.

the luxury of free water

Yesterday I headed over to west berlin to hang out with Chris and Danielle and their son Bode. I met up with them plus Tamara and Brien at their quite large and nice apartment. The area is maybe not as hopping as some parts of east berlin but they have a pretty nice space. We went over to the Schloss Charlottenburg and walked around the gardens in the back while talking about birds. Chris is a neuroscientist that works with birds, and Danielle is a science teacher. It’s nice to have scientist friends who break into monologues about birds rather than Agamben.

After that they made us a wonderful dinner, all the more wonderful because I think it was the first real home cooked meal I’ve had since I’ve been here. I don’t know if it’s because Berliners eat out a lot, or if my roommates just aren’t into cooking, but the kitchen in my apartment isn’t really set up well for cooking. I get by ok, but a lot of normal kitchen things I’m used to are absent, like a can opener (though C and D had an extra one and so generously gave it to me).

It’s also nice to sit around a table with people who are more in my age range. I’ve met some good people through the GI, but many of them are college aged, 20 or 21. This past year I’ve begun to notice a separation between myself and people who are that age, that I never really noticed when I was, say, 24. It’s not anything extreme – it’s not that I’m super-mature myself and I still find a minimal amount of energy to keep with things like new music – but I do find that I have less boundless energy and maybe a little more perspective.

That being said, after finishing dinner with the grown-ups I promptly headed back on the u-bahn to the “Bang Bang Club” and joined said 21 year olds to dance to indie-electro until 3am or so. The only difference was that, having been too many times to Blow Up SF/LA, I had considerably lower expectations about the club than they did.

Berlin First Thoughts

I’ve wanted to start a blog for sometime now, but of course never have time or initiative. So this is intending to be more than just a travel blog, but we’ll see if it keeps up after I get back. Anyway, I’ve been in Berlin for three weeks already now. I’ve been anticipating coming here and learning German for a quite a while now – at least since I graduated from college four years ago (!). So it’s good to be here. It’s also good to be in a real place after spending 9 months in Irvine.

The only time I’ve been here was 9 or 10 years ago with Brett. I remember walking into random connecting courtyards throughout the city, and finding parties in odd semi-abandoned places in east Berlin. As I expected, Berlin has changed quite a bit from then and is more developed. For example I remember sitting in Hackescher Markt with Brett and Les and walking around in that area, and it certainly wasn’t the high fashion center that it is now. I live in Prenzlauer Berg, in the former east. To compare it to something more familiar, it has a very ‘park slope’ feel to it. As my roommate Henning, who moved here in 1993, explained: “at first everything was very cheap and there were a lot of open spaces. Then it seemed that every woman in Western Europe came here to have a baby.” There are babies everywhere, including at the sushi bars and beer gardens. I live above a second-hand, vintage children’s clothing store.

I don’t mind this at all; in fact I really like Prenzlauer Berg. Everyday I walk or bike down Kollwitz Str to go the Goethe Institut (GI), and the sight of cafes and parks and people is great. Helmholtz Platz too is surrounded by a number of cafes, bars, restaurants, many of which have great brunch specials.

Anyway, I am off to meet Chris, whom I met through the GI, his wife Danielle, and their two-year-old Bode for dinner and hanging out, but I will try to catch up on what I’ve been up to in posts over the weekend. This may include: classes, tourist stuff, art, Berlin myths, losing/finding my keys, and other thoughts.